About
Geoffrey is the Vice President, General Manager - North America for Medallia. In this…
Experience
Education
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University of Maryland - Robert H. Smith School of Business
• Consumer Experience and Customer Segmentation - Fresh Market in Singapore.
• Global Business Strategy and consulting Brazilian Tourism - São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Disney Institute Workshop at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. -
Activities and Societies: Treasurer, Michigan State University Senior Class Council . President, MSU Hospitality Association . Executive Director, MSU Career Expo
• Employed 20-35 hours per week in addition to full time classes.
• Studied in Rajasthan, India & Dubai, UAE: International Lodging Development & Management.
• Awarded several academic honors including: Starwood Foundation Scholar, Marriott Foundation Scholar and American Hotel & Lodging Association Scholar.
• Held various student leadership positions including President of 600-student hospitality association, Executive Director of 70-company hospitality career fair, Treasurer of MSU…• Employed 20-35 hours per week in addition to full time classes.
• Studied in Rajasthan, India & Dubai, UAE: International Lodging Development & Management.
• Awarded several academic honors including: Starwood Foundation Scholar, Marriott Foundation Scholar and American Hotel & Lodging Association Scholar.
• Held various student leadership positions including President of 600-student hospitality association, Executive Director of 70-company hospitality career fair, Treasurer of MSU Senior Class, and member of Hospitality honors society Eta Sigma Delta.
Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
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Advisory Board - Center for Hospitality Research
Cornell School of Hotel Administration
- Present 3 years
Education
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Visiting Lecturer
Michigan State University - The Eli Broad College of Business
- Present 12 years
Education
Designed and regularly deliver a course on hotel asset management to Hotel Real Estate Investment Management students.
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Global Alumni Association Executive Board Member
Michigan State University
- 5 years
Education
Serve on International Alumni Board for Michigan State University to advise on University Strategy and Alumni Engagement.
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Chief Operating and Finance Officer
The District Holiday Gala to Benefit Horton's Kids
- 3 years
Children
In its sixth year, the District Holiday Gala fuses sophistication and simplicity for the 350 young professionals who attend. With a guest list as wide ranging as the event’s organizers (representing every major industry in the District), Gala offers the best way to celebrate the holidays with close friends and new friends.
Proceeds from the District Holiday Gala benefit Horton’s Kids, whose mission is to educate and empower the children of Washington, DC’s Ward 8 by providing…In its sixth year, the District Holiday Gala fuses sophistication and simplicity for the 350 young professionals who attend. With a guest list as wide ranging as the event’s organizers (representing every major industry in the District), Gala offers the best way to celebrate the holidays with close friends and new friends.
Proceeds from the District Holiday Gala benefit Horton’s Kids, whose mission is to educate and empower the children of Washington, DC’s Ward 8 by providing comprehensive, direct services which improve the quality of their daily lives and nurture their desire and ability to succeed.
Publications
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How Digital Engagement Technology Is Reshaping the Hospitality Industry
Hospitality Technology
As the hospitality industry emerges from the significant effects of the pandemic, it’s encountering new customer behaviors. Much of this will center around a holistic view of the travel experience and how real-time engagement technology can empower hotels to connect with guests and maximize their experiences.
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Summer lessons, holiday season predictions
Hotels Magazine
Today's top-performing travel and hospitality brands are achieving success during this summer's travel boom – while also planning for growth during the upcoming holiday travel season ahead – by doing these five things to drive loyalty, repeat bookings and overall customer lifetime value.
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The Difference Between Customer Engagement in a Pre- and Post-Pandemic World
Hospitality Technology
With the hospitality industry undergoing the biggest disruption in customer loyalty ever, hoteliers will benefit from reevaluating their customer engagement strategies and best practices.
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How to Create a Customer Engagement Strategy that Boosts Guest Satisfaction and Loyalty
Medallia
When hotel guests provide feedback, either positive or negative, it signals a willingness to engage with a brand and increases the chance for loyalty by almost 50%, according to recent research.
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The New Hotel Customers You Need to Take Care Of
Hotel Executive
Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise: Hotels have plenty of customers to take care of. In fact, there are more types of customers than ever who are looking for their needs to be met. Even if they're not checking in with you in person as often as they used to.
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7 New Rules for Increasing Guest Satisfaction
Hospitality Technology
The effect the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the hotel industry cannot be overstated. The resulting changes in travel patterns and broader consumer behaviors have had the single greatest impact within the modern era of the hospitality industry.
But these changes also present an opportunity for hospitality brands to rethink guest satisfaction. -
Guest loyalty as we knew it is gone
Hotels Magazine
Just about anybody can think about how they’ve changed their relationship with at least one brand in the last 12 months. Maybe you used to have the next five flights booked with a certain airline, but you’ve lost that rhythm now that you’re no longer traveling for business. Maybe it's the coffee shop a block away from your office that you’re no longer a regular of, now that you're working from home.
It’s no different for hotels. And, as a consequence, what we traditionally think of as…Just about anybody can think about how they’ve changed their relationship with at least one brand in the last 12 months. Maybe you used to have the next five flights booked with a certain airline, but you’ve lost that rhythm now that you’re no longer traveling for business. Maybe it's the coffee shop a block away from your office that you’re no longer a regular of, now that you're working from home.
It’s no different for hotels. And, as a consequence, what we traditionally think of as guest loyalty has changed and is still evolving. -
Customer Experience in the Hotel Industry: You May Not Have Guests, But You Still Have Customers
Medallia
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality industry are gloomy, but customer experience can be a competitive advantage — even if you think you don’t have a customer right now.
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Pre-Arrival Guest Experiences: The New Differentiator in the Experience Economy
Hotel Executive
From the first thought of booking a hotel and online research for accommodations, to reservations and post-reservation engagement, critical interaction happens with a hotel brand long before the guest steps foot through the hotel's front doors. Specifically, pre-arrival experiences are becoming big moments that matter in providing stellar guest experiences, and in ensuring a reservation is retained or expanded upon.
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6 Ways to Humanize Messaging Tools in the Hotel Industry
Medallia
Good customer service is key to any business’s success. But nowhere is a happy customer more important than in the hospitality industry, where guests look to staff to help them make their hotel experience as relaxing and comfortable as possible.
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Forging a Connection
Leisure and Hospitality Magazine
To ensure your hospitality company provides a positive and memorable customer experience, you must start with your best source of information – the guest. Gathering feedback teaches your enterprise what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and which of the two has more impact on the guest’s overall experience.
However, establishing brand loyalty and cultivating customers who return to your hotels time and time again takes more than a few survey questions. It requires looking at each…To ensure your hospitality company provides a positive and memorable customer experience, you must start with your best source of information – the guest. Gathering feedback teaches your enterprise what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and which of the two has more impact on the guest’s overall experience.
However, establishing brand loyalty and cultivating customers who return to your hotels time and time again takes more than a few survey questions. It requires looking at each piece of feedback through the guest’s perspective – seeing yourself as guests do – and using that data to determine next steps. It requires empathy. -
Staying Innovative
Leisure and Hospitality Magazine
With several tech options to enhance the guest experience, the key is offering the convenience of choice, engaging customers to give them a meaningful experience in the digital environment they prefer rather than limiting the interactions and only listening on a specific channel or app. The hotel companies leading the way are those that have an overall strategy to connect the various interactions - both human and digital - to their broader guest experience platform and analyze and measure the…
With several tech options to enhance the guest experience, the key is offering the convenience of choice, engaging customers to give them a meaningful experience in the digital environment they prefer rather than limiting the interactions and only listening on a specific channel or app. The hotel companies leading the way are those that have an overall strategy to connect the various interactions - both human and digital - to their broader guest experience platform and analyze and measure the success of each.
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Social Media Reviews Can Help Crack New Hospitality Markets in China and Beyond
Hotel Online
The social media landscape for hospitality has changed dramatically in recent years: hotel social reviews have grown 20 times since the start of the decade, and in the last ten years, many new online review sites have emerged globally. In addition to Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Google--which account for more than 80 percent of hotel social reviews--China's largest online travel agency and review site Ctrip is now a major global player, achieving 16x growth between 2012 to 2016 and prominent in…
The social media landscape for hospitality has changed dramatically in recent years: hotel social reviews have grown 20 times since the start of the decade, and in the last ten years, many new online review sites have emerged globally. In addition to Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Google--which account for more than 80 percent of hotel social reviews--China's largest online travel agency and review site Ctrip is now a major global player, achieving 16x growth between 2012 to 2016 and prominent in the luxury hotel market as the third biggest global website in social review volume.
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4 ways to boost your hotel's direct feedback results
Hotel Management
Customer feedback is constantly streaming in on review sites and social media. While this public feedback is incredibly valuable, it’s also vital to invest in direct solicited feedback such as surveys. If social media is a public forum, direct feedback is a personal dialogue between your company and your customers. Solicited feedback starts the conversation and allows you to get the responses you really want. Companies that want to increase verified feedback response rates and improve customer…
Customer feedback is constantly streaming in on review sites and social media. While this public feedback is incredibly valuable, it’s also vital to invest in direct solicited feedback such as surveys. If social media is a public forum, direct feedback is a personal dialogue between your company and your customers. Solicited feedback starts the conversation and allows you to get the responses you really want. Companies that want to increase verified feedback response rates and improve customer experience can boost survey results with a few simple tips.
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Six Digital Hospitality Trends for 2018
Lodging Magazine
As technology continues to evolve and influence how people travel, hoteliers can expect to see shifts in digital strategies across the industry—from marketing and in-house guest interactions to how brands interact with owners. Geoffrey Ryskamp, the principal director of global hospitality at software and customer experience company Medallia, names six digital hospitality trends that the industry should look out for in 2018.
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Introducing Global Benchmarking
Medallia
At Medallia, we know that it is critically important for global hotel brands to understand how they are performing in customer experience versus their competition. That is why Medallia’s Social Feedback solution now includes Global Benchmarking, which enables real-time, brand-level benchmarking based on social reviews and scores from the top social sites in hospitality, delivered natively within Medallia Experience Cloud. With the ability to track aggregated metrics in social dashboards, slice…
At Medallia, we know that it is critically important for global hotel brands to understand how they are performing in customer experience versus their competition. That is why Medallia’s Social Feedback solution now includes Global Benchmarking, which enables real-time, brand-level benchmarking based on social reviews and scores from the top social sites in hospitality, delivered natively within Medallia Experience Cloud. With the ability to track aggregated metrics in social dashboards, slice and dice social data, and receive trigger alerts for urgent feedback that requires immediate attention, we are excited to empower the hospitality industry to dive deeper into this wealth of data to better understand competitive positioning and increase customer satisfaction at all levels.
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Three ways to use customer referrals to amplify your marketing
tnooz
Hospitality brands that want an effective word-of-mouth program should align referral programs with a broader strategy to create customer value for everyone — both prospects and patrons.
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Personalized Engagement Is Key to Stellar Customer Service in the Sharing Economy
Hospitality Technology
Getting customer engagement right in the digital age is both a science and an art. Traditional guest services, delivered with quality and care will never go out of style. But now hotels have to create an even more personalized and special experience than a local host offering a live-in-the-city experience. By measuring key customer touch points before and after guests arrive — now available through a wealth of digital information — hotels can create a comprehensive customer engagement strategy…
Getting customer engagement right in the digital age is both a science and an art. Traditional guest services, delivered with quality and care will never go out of style. But now hotels have to create an even more personalized and special experience than a local host offering a live-in-the-city experience. By measuring key customer touch points before and after guests arrive — now available through a wealth of digital information — hotels can create a comprehensive customer engagement strategy that transforms guests into lifelong clients and keeps them coming back to a more traditional hospitality option.
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Four ways to engage guests on social media
tnooz
When hotel brands respond to reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor and Google it’s often a reactive endeavour.
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Manhattan Lodging Index
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Writer/editor of 2007 and 2008 quarterly editions of the Manhattan Lodging Index - An update on Manhattan's lodging market, widely used by lodging brands, developers, and owners.
Courses
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Advanced Hospitality Finance
HB482
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Capital Markets
BUFN740
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Competitive and Collaborative Negotiation
BUMO714
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Data, Models and Decisions
BUSI630
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Hospitality Business Law
HB447
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Hospitality Business Strategy
HB489
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Marketing Analysis
BUMK706
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Money, Banking, and Financial Markets
EC330
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Real Estate Principles and Construction Finance
BCM325
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Strategic Management
BUSI690
Projects
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Singapore Consumer Experience Field Study - Cold Storage
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Analyzed Cold Storage stores in Singapore and conducted broad-based consumer insights through interviews and demographic analysis.
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Brazil Consulting Project - Brazilidade
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Provided strategic direction on core business function, definition of customers, competitor analysis and website redesign.
Honors & Awards
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Emerging Alumni Leader of the Year
Michigan State University
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Star Award
Choice Hotels International
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Chairman's Award
PricewaterhouseCoopers
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Starwood Foundation Scholar
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
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American Hotel & Lodging Association Scholar
American Hotel & Lodging Association
Organizations
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Michigan State University International Alumni Board
Board Member
- PresentNominated and elected member of the International Advisory Council for of the Michigan State University Alumni Association.
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HAMA, the Hospitality Asset Managers Association
Inducted Member
- Present -
Michigan State University Real Estate Investment Management Advisory Council
Council Member
- PresentIn addition to council duties developed and instruct course on Asset Management at Michigan State University.
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Hospitality Industry Disruptive Innovation Forum
Panelist
-San Francisco
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Hospitality Industry Forum - Financial Impact of the Travel Promotion Act
Panelist
-Washington, DC
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Toastmasters International
Vice President of Education - Silver Spring, MD Group
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American Hotel & Lodging Educational Foundation
Board Member of Scholars Alumni Association Advisory Committee
-Served on national committee to create awareness of its members through networking, education, and career development opportunities, positioning members as future hospitality leaders.
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